Cardinal Pie: Jesus Christ is King

Jesus Christ is King of the nations!

Jesus Christ is king; he is not one of the prophets, not one of the evangelists and apostles who does not assure him of his quality and his attributions of king. Jesus is still in the cradle, and already the Magi seek the King of the Jews Ubi is who is natu, rex Judoerum? Jesus is on the verge of death: Pilate asks him: So you are king: Ergo rex are you? You said it, Jesus answers. And this answer is made with such an accent of authority that Pilate, notwithstanding all the representations of the Jews, consecrates the kingship of Jesus by a public writing and a solemn poster .

Write, then, write, O Pilate, the words which God dictates to you, and of which you do not understand the mystery. Whatever one may say and represent, beware of changing what is already written in heaven. May your orders be irrevocable, because they are executing an immutable stop of the Almighty. That the kingship of Jesus Christ be promulgated in the Hebrew language, which is the language of the people of God, and in the Greek language, which is the language of the teachers and philosophers, and in the Roman language which is the language of the empire and the world, the language of the conquerors and politicians. Come now, O Jews, heirs of the promises; and you, O Greeks, inventors of the arts; and you, Romans, masters of the earth; come and read this admirable sign; bend your knee before your King.

Hear the last words that N.-S. address to His Apostles, before ascending to heaven: All power was given to me in heaven and on earth. Go and teach all nations. Notice, my brethren, Jesus Christ does not say all men, all individuals, all families, but all nations. It does not only say: Baptize the children, catechize the adults, marry the spouses, administer the sacraments, give the religious burial to the dead. No doubt, the mission that He confers on them understands all this, but it understands more than that, it has a public, social character because Jesus Christ is the king of peoples and nations. And as God sent the ancient prophets to the nations and to their chiefs to reproach them for their apostasies and their crimes, so Christ sends His apostles and priesthood to the peoples, to the empires, to the rulers and the legislators to teach all His doctrine and His law. Their duty, like that of St. Paul, is to bear the name of Jesus Christ before the nations and kings and sons of Israel.

Thus, Jesus Christ gives His Apostles the official mission to preach His social reign, even more, He wants this reign to be proclaimed by all the faithful. He will have him asked every day by every Christian in the Pater's prayer. Never has the divine founder of Christianity better revealed to the earth what a Christian should be than when he taught His disciples how to pray. In fact, prayer being like the religious breathing of the soul, it is in the elementary formula that Jesus Christ has given that we must seek the whole program and the whole spirit of Christianity. Let's listen to Teacher's current lesson. So you will pray, said Jesus. Sic ergo your orabitis. Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name, May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The Christian, therefore, is not as seems to believe it and as affirms every day and on all the tones a certain contemporary world, it is not therefore a being who isolates himself in himself, who is sequestrated in an oratory indistinctly closed to all the rumors of the age, and which, satisfied provided he saves his soul, takes no care of the business of this world. The Christian is the opposite of that. The Christian is a public and social man par excellence, his nickname indicates it: he is Catholic, which means universal. Jesus Christ, in tracing the Lord's prayer, ordered that none of his people could perform the first act of the religion which is the prayer, without being in contact, according to his degree of intelligence and according to his the expanse of the horizon open before him, with all that can advance or delay, favor or prevent the reign of God on earth.
And as assuredly the works of man must be coordinated with his prayer, he is not a Christian worthy of the name who does not actively employ himself to the extent of his forces, to procure this temporal reign of God and to reverse which hinders him.

Mgr Pie - November 8, 1859 - Homily on the panegyric of St. Emilian

Adapted from here.